Traditional JUJUTSU - Wilmington NC

Our school is very young (1 Instructor, 4 green belts, 3 blue belts, 6 yellow belts and several white belts in and out) Not to mention about 12 kids students that are in varying ranks.

We are a non competitive school that emphasis training in cooperation with fellow students to increase ability. We train dynamically to increase speed, awareness, and power. Safety and camaraderie is our number one concern. :ninja7:

Shoshin-ryu is definitely not koryu, our techniques largely seeming to stem from budo and Kokondo/Jukido. We have Judo throws like O-goshi, Harai goshi, Kata Guruma, and Osoto gari (apologies for any bad spelling.) White belts learn Osoto, Kouchi gari, and O-goshi both as individual throws and as part of our self defense techniques. Once our new facility gets built with spring floor and once we have a solid base of people who actually know throws and more grappling we plan to do randori. We do roll in an alive manner (fully resisting, full intensity, etc.) and work guard, mount, and other BJJ/Judo type positions partially.

As for self-defense techniques, a lot of them are Aikido-style wrist grabs, front chokes, bear hugs (not sure if Aikido has bear hug defenses but I'll include them here anyway for sake of completeness.) along with RBSD styl groin strikes and eye gouges and Judo throws. At first practice is not alive, but technique based. Once the technique is consistent we move to more aliveness, giving our partner more and more **** and making it harder for them to get the wristlock on. I would say it is about Shodokan Aikido's level of aliveness, sometimes a little more so. Instead of a static rear choke for instance, the person giving the choke is encouraged to pull the nage back and off balance and jerk them around, making it harder to execute the technique. Or rather than walking up and grabbing the wrist statically, or like an Aikido one where we attack you like a drunk with an inner ear problem, we grab and try to pull the nage off-balance.

We do have kata, the ones being mandatory at white belt being from the Pinan and Henka series, which if I recall correctly are karate kata and are also used by our parent art of Kokondo.

So traditional Jujutsu I think is part of the way we train, kata, wristlocks, and weapons, rather than a claim of a Japanese koryu lineage. Though when the art broke away from Kokondo apparently we consulted with the Sensei of a Japanese ryu on the matter of both our jujutsu type techniques and our weapons. I don't believe we have a lineage to this Sensei, and I'm afraid I don't have the verification of this that Bullshido rightly asks for so I of course expect you to be skeptical as you people deal with bullshitters like Ashida Kim all day.

So to sum up: not Koryu, with a blend of different techniques from budo such as Judo, aikido, karate (which I think isn't koryu but I could be mistaken), and others. We roll alive once the student has a base (I'm not talking like a black belt base or brown belt base, more like yellow belt.) Intend to begin randori once our new facility is done by the end of this year, and also every few sundays we have sparring at what I would call a 6-7 on the aliveness scale (medium contact with boxing head gear, MMA gloves, and shin guards, with standup and grapple.) Kata with bunkai emphasis, and an outstanding and fun instructor who is in excellent shape and doesn't have "fat master syndrome". It really is a hippy ass beating lovefest.

We train in a gymnastics gym with a very small class, a space we share with a capoeira group of which I am also a part so there is often plenty of room, and a new martial arts facility is being constructed in back for both groups' use with spring floors to enable us to randori.

I would recommend Wilmington, NC Shoshin-ryu Jujitsu to anybody looking for a traditional style of school, white gi, bowing, weapons work at higher belts, and still desiring of randori rolling and more alive pracice styles once we get the ball rolling. We welcome visitors. I love this dojo and have a blast in addition to getting a decent workout. The techniques are trained alive enough that I definitely believe they would work.

Normal class consists of warmup and stretching, followed by basic kicks, strikes, and stances, then we work a judo throw or two. We then do self defence techniques (same-side wrist grab, bear hug, rear choke, sort of techniques). End of class we normally do rolling, ground fighting or kata depending on the day.